The looming education crisis

Every now and then a book arrives that combines a lot of good books (such as “Flash Foresight”, “Business exposed”, “Future Minds”, “New Normal”, “Poke the box” mixed with authors such as Pink and Handy) and it blows your mind.

The banking crisis was chicken feed

The general gist of “Out of our minds” is that the banking crisis was chicken feed compared to the looming education crisis. We are not preparing our kids for the new world, which need imagination, creativity and innovation, not commodity academics. He calls it the tyranny of common sense.

Technology

He makes the case by referring to the technology trends that are currently underway. He talks about nano, a nanometer is how much a beard grows in a second), the law of accelerating return (we will merge without our own technology), the fact that there are more microchips than there are ants and that 4 billion people use the internet. He talks about how these trends will converge and transform our world.

The most important leadership competency will be creativity

In the new world, the most important leadership competency will be creativity. In the new world, we will need talent that can deal with complexity, have entrepreneurial skills, are technological literate and have global acumen. Does our education system deliver that? No, it does not.

Existential vacuum

He talks about the “existential vacuum”. Which is the loss of meaning of existence that makes life worthwhile. Which refers straight to books such as “Emotionomics” and “The art of happiness at work”. The USA economy loses 355 billion dollars a year because employees are disengaged. Because we are not educated properly and because we are not prepared for the digital revolution, we switch off.

Without passion, there is no innovation

Because we switch off there is no passion. Thinking and feeling are at the heart of the creative process. Without passion, there is no innovation. There is a direct correlation between happy staff that love what they do and innovation. There is a direct correlation between innovation and business survival.

So what do you need to do?

Be a creative leader

Make sure your people love what they are doing

Engage everybody in the creative life of your organisation

Give people time to develop themselves (create your own university)

Give people time to be imaginative and creative (Google and 3M as the examples)

Ron Immink

I help companies by developing an inspiring and clear future perspective, which creates better business models, higher productivity, more profit and a higher valuation. Best-selling author, speaker, writer.